The present invention relates generally to evaluating quality of service provided over a network, and more particularly, to systems and methods for monitoring the quality of steaming audio and video over a network such as the Internet.
With the explosive growth of the Internet, increased traffic has caused the performance experienced by users making connections over the Internet to vary widely. The lower the quality of audio and video downloaded from a Web site, the more likely the user is to go to a competitor's Web site. Thus, it is important for companies to be aware of the quality of audio and video experienced by users at their Internet sites so that they can quickly identify problems, upgrade their equipment, modify the content of their Web site, or otherwise improve the quality of audio and video available to users at their Web site.
Many factors influence the performance of a connection including the user's modem and other equipment, the type of server, the load on the server, and the Internet service provider used. The first step in evaluating connection performance is to obtain reliable information regarding performance characteristics across a connection.
One approach to measuring Web site performance is to connect measurement agents to the Internet at various geographic locations. This approach is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/868,616, filed Jun. 3, 1997, by Barrick et al. The system disclosed therein uses a browser agent to send an HTTP GET command to a server and then record the amount of time it takes to complete transmission of the data. The agents evaluate the performance of a Web site by measuring the amount of time it takes to download a Web page. Due to their remote location, the agents are able to evaluate the performance of a Web site from the end user's perspective, and are able to measure the effects of the intervening network itself in addition to the performance of the Web server. As a result, the performance seen by an agent can provide a reasonable approximation for the service experienced by customers connecting to the Internet at approximately the same location, and at approximately the same time as the agent.
While this is a useful indicator of server performance for downloading a Web page, it does not provide quality of service measurements for streaming media. There is, therefore, a need for a method and system for simulating a session in which streaming media is broadcast over the network and performance is monitored to identify problem areas and compare performance with other streaming media sites.